Assignment to Disaster by Edward S. Aarons Read Free Book Online Page B

always said you needed a girl. I wish…"
    "No," he said, almost violently.
    "Sam, I'm sorry for you."
    He was surprised. "For me? Don't be. Sid."
    "Come back soon. I need to talk to you."
    "Is there anything I can get for you, that you need?"
    "No. Thank you, Sam."
    "Anything I can do…"
    "Finish the job," she said. "For Lew."

Chapter Nine
    The plane was riding high through the night, trying to overtake the purple sunset. The earth was hidden beneath cotton clouds. The interior of the bomber was austere, stripped, a pattern of punched-out Duralumin girders painted gray, yellow, black. He was in a bucket seat where he could see the seven-man crew up forward, hunched over a fantastic series of lighted banked instruments. One of them yawned. None was curious about him.
    A blond young airman second class worked his way back toward Durell. "Are you all right, sir?" A Mississippi drawl.
    "Fine."
    "You like some coffee, sir?"
    "Yes, please. Thanks. Could you tell me where we are now?"
    "Vicksburg, I reckon."
    He thought of the mighty river below. Several hundred miles to the south, in the Cajun bayou country, was his grandfather, aboard the old hulk of the
Three Belles.
His mind spun back to the past and he remembered Bayou Peche Rouge and the general store when he was fourteen, and Toinette Deslabes, whose papa ran the store. Toinette he remembered well, the way she ate oranges, small white teeth biting into the pulp. He remembered a night in the Pass-a-Joix, across the bayou, when he and 'Toinette had walked along the
chenière
together and then stopped walking and sank to earth under the moss-dripping live oaks. There were awkward fumblings, the making of love for the first time, frightened and ashamed when he failed. He remembered the smell of her, the pungency of oranges, the way she had writhed, frustrated by his boyish failure, how she had come at him furiously with a knife and he had knocked her down and taken the knife away; and then because she was no longer the aggressor, he was able to take her as he willed. Later, his grandfather had asked him what had happened, and he knew the sounds they had made had carried across the still black water, across the masses of water hyacinth…
    His stomach tightened. He thought of Deirdre Padgett. He saw her in his mind with the bullet-headed giant, tortured and in pain, hurt badly. He forced himself to shy away from the images.
    Later, at Yale, there was a girl from Litchfield, in her beaver coat, in her little roadster, driving back through the icy, barren hills to her home for dinner after the football game. She had turned into a barway, parking in the dark among the frozen, crystal weeds, and torn off her fur coat, torn away the veneer of Radcliffe, and it had been awkward in the tiny car, and strange to sit at dinner later in the old colonial house, with the milk glass and antique copper and the huge fireplace, and feel her hand groping for him under the table while her parents discussed the Yale eleven and its chances against Harvard…
    Deirdre, he thought, wanting to forget her, unable to forget her, helpless to aid her wherever she was at this moment. He told himself there was nothing he could have done back there that Swayney wouldn't do. He told himself that McFee was right, that the men who had taken her might as easily manage to bring her to Las Tiengas tomorrow. It didn't do any good. He thought of her red flowing hair, her wide gray eyes, the courage in her that fought against the ugly haunting fears. He thought of her bitter anger, because her brother had been abused and served with injustice. She had known, in his apartment, that she had been mistaken. He had seen it dawn in her, the knowledge that she herself was not important, or her brother; not any of them. But it had come too late, this putting aside of personal feelings. She might be dead now.
    The bomber flew on through the night.
    There were no clouds over Texas, and the stars were like polished bits of